It’s a dress-circle view that Vinta Nanda brings, of what half a lifetime of a truly creative person appears to be – it’s Rahul Vohra onstage in this theatre today. 

Rahul Vohra solo pictures by: Meenal Agarwal

Starting in 1984 with the Delhi theatre group Chingari, Rahul Vohra has a deep understanding of Indian folk and classical arts and of World theatre and cinema. First as the founding coordinator of Sarthi, a voluntary group set up to address basic rights of traditional artists and artisans, and since 1999 with his own independent company Apostrophe 99, Rahul directed productions with troupes of performing artists and crafts persons from across India, showcasing their work internationally, including in France, Spain, Reunion Island and Hong Kong. 

Some of his projects include: The Gypsy Road (La Route Tsigane - 1993) and Navrasa (1998) at the Festival Printemps des Comédiens, Montpellier and in the Reunion Island, Jhalak at the World Cultural Forum at Barcelona, The Palace of Winds with an international cast of artists from six countries to inaugurate the festival Printemps des Comédiens in the month of June 2005 and ‘08, and the Mahabharata with Jean Claude Carrière and Teejan Bai along with an international cast in Reunion Island. 

He’s been an artistic consultant on several documentary films for French TV channels such as TF1, FR2, FR3, Arte, Planète and Paris Première. He’s acted in many feature and short films in Hindi, English and French such as: Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra - A Tale Of Love, and Monsoon Wedding, Sabrina Dhawan’s Saanjh, Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades and Franck Appréderis’ Le Passeur d’enfants de Pondichéry. On television, he has featured among others, in shows such as Amma and Family, Good Morning Today, Bhanwar, Yeh Dil Kya Kare, RAAZ and Aap Jo Bolen Han to Han and he has also hosted The Real India Travel Show on BBC World. 

After graduating in Economics from the University of Delhi, Rahul completed his Masters in French Cinema and Translation from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and specialized in International Cultural Management with a state doctorate at FIC/UNESCO, Paris and the University of Burgundy, Dijon France. 

Rahul was a consultant to Jean Claude Carrière for his book ‘Dictionary of India lovers’ and has delivered lectures on the influence of the Panchtantra and ancient Indian literature on Lafontaine’s fables and on the relationship between Bhava, Rasa, and Tala in Indian Performing Arts at the Festival Lire en Fetes at Champ Borne in Reunion Island. 

Having worked with theatre greats like Jacques Lasalle and Ariane Mnouchkine, he has played the principal lead nearly 900 times in the famous musical Bharati, which has run to full houses since 2006 in Paris and across the Globe, and has been viewed live by close to 3.5 million spectators. Rahul was conferred the top civilian honor, Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres), by the Government of France in 2014, for significant contribution to theatre and cinema. More recently, he was Lead Actor and India Producer for Claude Lelouch’s latest film in India, One Plus One. 

And as you will read his answers to my questions coming up further, you, like me, will wonder too, how one man can pack so much into a lifetime – sorry half a lifetime would be better said because Rahul Vohra is still on the go and a young man as yet. 

Over to him then… 

Why did you decide to become an actor and when did the bug bite? Tell me all about yourself, where were you born and where you grew up - schooling, college and theatre journey? 

I was born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Even though I knew from the age of six, when I first went up on stage for a fancy dress competition at a forward air-base, that I was going to be an actor (and of course I dreamt of being a fighter pilot like most adults around me then), it wasn’t until I reached my second year in college that the first major steps were taken in that direction. 

You see, our entire class of Economics Honors in Deshbandhu College, Delhi University, failed that year and we were obliged to repeat the academic year - since 1982-86, this Alma Mater however did gift me with some friendships that last until today; quite a few of them very big brands in Bollywood and Showbiz as well as some IT emperors in the US. 

But until the finals, we had to find ways to keep ourselves occupied. And of course, the recourse to regular pocket money was also forbidden as a reward for the spectacular marks-sheet! I was more or less grounded until things improved or until I found myself more scholastic pursuits than playing billiards ‘professionally’. 

Off then, I went to Max Mueller Bhavan to enroll myself in German speaking classes. But they were full up and asked me to come back the following semester. So, I decided to try the Alliance Française in order to learn French instead! They had the very last seat left, which I grabbed. 

The rest, as they say, is history: standing first in that semester earned me the next one free, as with the subsequent four. A couple of years later, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and an equivalent in French almost simultaneously. Immediately after this, I was introduced to the magical panoply of diverse cultures and aesthetics that is the unassailable fiefdom of the traditional arts in India. This would further lead to my doing an MA in French Cinema and Translation from JNU and then a State Doctorate in International Cultural Management. 

Curiously, within a month of my providential admission into the Alliance, another miracle was slowly unraveling. A theatre group, Chingari, was being formed with some professors and ex-students of the Alliance, and I became its part, landing my first lead role in theatre, alongside some fellow thespians that are household names today. This was during the months of July–Nov 1984 and the 17 of us involved in the production lived through one of the darkest moments of India’s history as a family, under one roof in the IIT campus. 

Theatre groups in those days didn’t have money to pay for rehearsal spaces so we would rehearse in the changing rooms of the swimming pool, magnanimously afforded to us by gracious professors in return for one potential future performance for the faculty and alumni. On the night of the 31st of October, the premiere was on the 18th of November and Mrs. Indira Gandhi had been assassinated, Delhi went ballistic and rogue, fuelled by some criminals that history will never forgive. We shopped and cooked by day, rehearsed in the evening and took out peace marches in the night - we told each other stories, taught and learnt skills from each other like cooking, accounting, French dictations, languages, driving, and my fate was sealed forever. 

From the shaky and tentative first few rehearsals, through the last fortnight, to the heady curtain calls of the première, it was a foregone conclusion that I would know no other life apart from performing. And till today I maintain that I don’t go to work, but to play. For an actor is forever playing, be it at a theatre or in front of camera - though on a lighter note some critics would even suggest all the time, on or off the stage! These two events were to shape my entire life, as I have known it thus far, juggling many hats, some literary, many artistic - but constantly juggling, nonetheless. 

I take a pause here to draw your attention to three important facts: 1) That even though it was a subconscious desire from the very early life moments that I can recollect clearly, I never let go of my dream and kept nurturing it, even when all the odds were stacked against it never materializing, 2) the incident of repeating the second year taught me how to deal with failure very early on in life, each subsequent failure only hiding a greater, future success and 3) the billowing sails of aptitude and instinct can smoothly ride tougher waves than the formidable engines of formal training and education. From those fading moments, until now, it’s been a whirlwind of a life - travelling, performing, despairing, exulting and finally, curiously researching. 

I have worked with tribal artistes and classical maestros, with painters and sculptors and animation designers, from architects to carpenters and ironsmiths, from world fashion divas to weavers, from international theatre greats to street magicians and jugglers, from Oscar winning directors to student filmmakers, equally at ease fêted in a five star or seated in a slum, in a metro city or in a remote village, and it has been an exquisite discovery: of life, of psychology and of the ever-expanding capacity of humans to achieve what was thought impossible even just a few years back. 

So it’s hope that’s been driving you all the while? 

All this to say that one must not lose hope, for life has an uncanny ability to pleasantly surprise you every given instant. Sure I’ve had many, many, sad experiences as well, on varied levels, but then, I think that the happy experiences I have lived would far outweigh those. And when one has decided to swim against the tide, no waves can be too big and no amount of ridicule can weaken your resolve; this, more so when you are your own boss and the buck definitely stops with you. 

And of course, the most important of all notions - travel, which teaches you how to unearth one of life’s most badly hidden secrets - that, across the globe and across the country, humans are the selfsame even when sense of clothing, language, rituals, nourishment, occupation or mores are different. This means that one understands very quickly that one must immediately strip all these extraneous qualities and go straight for the pulse, because, if you catch that, then your frequencies match perfectly and communication occurs over channels that are invisible to the human eye, heart and head! 

This for me as an actor has been the greatest gift, my peregrinations have given me thus far; being able to instantly click and bond with any nature of people. 

What brought you to Mumbai and how were the first couple of years in the city? 

I would have come here in the late 1980s itself, but there was just such an exquisitely delicious variety of International projects in their geneses in that epoch that I just stayed in a city which, for me has and always shall be, the cultural capital of India (I am not in touch with any IT-Cells, so I’m unaware of how less than one third of our population sees it otherwise) - Meri Dilli or My Delhi or Mai Deli or Maidey li, and it pains me no end to see it mutilated and violated currently because of one man’s lust for his ego. 

In any case, after a point it was impossible to call oneself an actor and not be present in the city of ‘cinema’ and I was horrendously lucky, when I came in the end 1998 to BOMBAY as I knew it since I was born, because within the first three to four months of being here I got a couple of telefilms and then there were roles in TV series. 

How are movies different from live stage performances? Which do you enjoy more? 

As an actor, the stage, any day – it’s the actor’s medium. That is where I live, I exist, and I am. It’s like God gives you a boon to lead many lives in one lifetime, sometimes many boons - those micro-lives that are born the instant one steps onto stage and into the lights from the wings and that die away with the ebbing bows. 

It’s an unparalleled fantastic feeling - the pleasure of being able to make people travel without physically moving them; hearing their heartbeat resonate with yours and observing your emotions echo in their souls. That connection is a passion-filled spell, and time ceases to exist. It could go to anyone’s head in an instant, and yet, one learns anew each day; a very humbling experience. There’s a whole sense of linearity of time and narrative whereas in cinema, it could go from anywhere to anywhere, as we could, lets say, start by shooting the end sequence. 

Tell us about how you negotiated your way into the mainstream and what the first couple of projects that you worked on were about? 

Well I had already acted on Bombay’s stages and in those days there were very few – Prithvi, NCPA, Russian Cultural Centre, Sophia, and for all of us from Delhi, another suburban theatre, St Andrews, that I hadn’t heard of. We experimented with theatre in those days, playing absurd theatre like ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Deathwatch’, amongst many others experiments like ‘Hayavadana’ in English and ‘Tartuffe (on wheels)’ in Hindi.  

Real Theatre, as opposed to what Peter Brook calls Deadly Theatre in his book ‘The Empty Space’ teaches an actor equilibrium, a practiced restraint and to observe and to look for answers in inner depths, in the pursuit of newer expression, what I call the incestuous flirtation between form and abstraction, journeying us from the beginning to the end of a story and back again in a trice. 

One learns how to incarnate different personae, replete with gaze, stance, gesture, gait, expression, breathing and rhythm. And I haven’t even begun speaking of savoring each word and playing with the voice, the timbre, projection, volume, speed and frequency, leave alone using emotions and the Rasas - India’s exquisite gift to the world of aesthetics. Theatre has, for me demonstrated the sheer propensity of a performer to be able to influence his audience’s soul deeply and permanently in myriad ways, rather than to help reiterate the audiences’ preconceived notions of what ‘acting’ must be! 

All this to say that one quickly got identified with the ‘actor’ tag as opposed to the ‘star’ tag and I would do the rounds of going to give pictures to film and television directors. One of the first people I met was someone who used to direct a food show - Hansal Mehta. He offered me a lead in his first telefilm to inaugurate the series later known as Star Bestsellers and immediately after that Ravi Ojha offered me another lead in a telefilm for Zee TV on similar lines and the rest as they say, was a given. I never looked back and some good TV projects kept on happening. 

What brought you to the world of production and to work behind the camera? What has been your experience with it? 

In the early eighties, while I was studying French, working with traditional artistes and also doing theatre, I used to ‘fix’ for French Documentary and Television crews coming to shoot in India in order to earn handsome amounts, as the performing arts were not so moneyed in those days. 

They would look for good French speakers as well as people with the ability to respond at short notice to any kind of request and they paid in foreign exchange. The job basically involved everything from production to travel arrangements, to being artistic advisors to being their local guide and handyman, as well as looking out for ideas and visuals, which might be interesting to their audiences. One had to rent equipment sometimes, hire specific vehicles at other times, and look for interesting faces to interview or else to simply personally connect with forest officers and rangers to shoot in sanctuaries of endangered species along with experts in wildlife. 

So I had to have an Indian soul while maintaining a Producer’s heart and looking at everything through a European lens. It goes without saying that this innate juggling never left me and led instead to myriad projects in the fields of documentary films, television, live performing arts festivals, advertising, literature, storytelling, theatre, cinema and showbiz over the years. 

Production therefore became second nature because one had done everything from scratch and the pleasure of delivering a project one has hemmed in from the first idea up until the final product, is a feeling only those with whom the buck stops would know. Speaking of which, I remember we were once shooting a documentary on the Bishnoi community and the Black Bucks in extremely tough winter conditions on the desert landscapes near Jodhpur. We would spot extraordinary herds of the majestic deer, but as soon as we tried to get a close up of them, they would scoot. 

We, along with a local gentleman, tried for about a week in various places, with me tiredly driving the jeep in 4x4 mode till one night we were sitting in the bar of our palace-converted-into-a-hotel deep in the desert and having a drink, being regaled by stories by the Maharaja. I mentioned our experiences to him and he laughed for at least 15 minutes, ordered fresh sets of drinks for everyone and asked me if I had ever gone hunting. Being a Fauji brat and growing up in remote corners of the country, of course I had, but not since I was a child. So he asked me if we were shooting from upwind or from downwind vis-à-vis the herds? And I said, “Oh my-gosh of course”. In our excitement at spotting the beautiful specimen, no one had bothered to check, least of all I. 

We immediately thanked him profusely and retired, deciding to leave before sunrise the next morning. We reached the grazing grounds and watering holes, went downwind, so they could neither hear nor smell us and got some of the most exquisite shots that I have ever been part of - after that all of us as a team went on to do five or six more wildlife films, closely following this principle. One lives and learns. 

Tell us about your tryst with international projects - both as an actor and as a producer. 

The month of October this year will mark 32 years since I played in France for the first time, with Jacques Lasalle and Alain Knapp at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, to celebrate the Bicentenary of the French Revolution that began on the 14th of July 1789. 

Living in Strasbourg for eight months was a lifetime of revelations. It was also the moment of euphoric emotions, a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall - a key event (of which we would only learn the importance of later). We drove off to cross the Rhine into Germany without visas, to reach the wall in Berlin and break a piece of it, chickened out just before we got there; and quickly scampered back before we were arrested - this was when you needed 6 visas to go from Belgium to Italy that paved the way to Maastricht and Schengen. 

At that time, I was sent by the French embassy in New Delhi, to play in a Franco-Indian production specially created around the conversations between Romain Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. 

It is with great warmth that I recall those heady days with the unforgettable experience for a 25-year-old. And since then, I have not stopped collecting artistic experiences and cumulative memories that today are a multitude of reminiscences of collaborations with France - there, as well as in India. 

From the Elysée Palace and Brunch with President Mitterand to the Place de la Comédie in Montpellier, from Petite-France in Strasbourg to La Capitole in Toulouse, from Delhi to Goa and from Hyderabad to Calcutta; from the screen to the stage and back, from the couture previews of Coco Chanel, Hermès, Jean-Louis Sherrer and Christian Dior in the pyramid of the Louvre, from spending a frozen night in Lyon Perrache Station in the middle of winter in a Khadi Kurta Pyjama in -16 degrees temperatures to being fêted at Le Palais des Congrès in Paris - 34 years of Indo-French madness. 

How were you able to bring the Indo-France cultural connection to becoming a thing? 

I have conceived, directed and produced various performances with traditional artistes from across the world. In India alone, more than 6000 different forms of performing arts exist and I have the grand honor of working with almost all of them at some point. To start with, Regional theatre is very, very strong in many states in our country. For example, Gujarat and Maharashtra have very intensely popular theatre practitioners and audiences. In certain states like Assam, theatre actors often earn more in one season than many a film star does elsewhere. 

Also, let us not discount folk theatre, for, each state of this marvelous panoply of cultures that is India, has its very own musical theatre form, be it, for example, Therukuthu in Tamil Nadu, Yakshagana in Karnataka, Nautanki in UP or Jatra in Bengal - all still fortunately well appreciated and enjoyed by eager audiences and performed by extraordinarily multi-talented exponents with an ability to act, dance, play music, sing, compose, write poetry and improvise on the spot.  

Many elements of these have in fact been integrated into contemporary offerings as well. So deeply ingrained are these in our culture that, in fact, I would even go to the extent of suggesting that musicals themselves were born in India. And yet it was the West that elevated them into an art. Therefore most of my productions have been of the musical genre along with multi-disciplinary forms like puppetry, acrobatics, juggling and magic, more often than not searching for contemporary formats to present traditional forms, so warmly received the world over. 

One International Showbiz project that I worked on was the live musical Bharati, in French and in English, depending on where it was playing. A brilliantly crafted exquisite explosion of the colors, the customs, the choreographies, the costumes, the imageries, the lights, the philosophies, the rites, the rituals, the music, the stories, the mirages and the legends of India. 

In short, a roller coaster ride through the momentous parade of the rich and varied cultures of a wonderful mystical, traditional yet modern land called INDIA, humbly proffered by a motley group of beautiful, talented and simply energetic people. 

I played the principal lead - the Sutradhaar, the Narrator - nearly a thousand times all over the world, since its premiere in Paris. He is for me, the amalgam of all my schizophrenic existences - that of a theatre actor, that of a film personality, that of a student of world and Indian aesthetics, among those of a Francophile and a lover of languages and a languid observer of life - part spectator, part actor - that invisible thread. Sutradhaar literally means he who holds the thread - The Master Puppeteer, which though insignificant by itself, binds many impeccable gems together, into a priceless necklace. 

What are the more recent projects you’ve been involved with? 

More recently, I was the India Producer for the French Maestro Claude Lelouch’s ode to India, titled Un plus Une or One plus One. The project started off as a Skype conversation between us. He was planning to shoot in Brazil but we had a conversation anyway. We spoke of many things, since Claude had visited India only once for two days as Jury of a Film Festival and he said he went from the Aircraft to the festival, then to his hotel and back to the festival before catching a plane home. And consequently he had no idea about India or its culture. So we decided to schedule a recce for him in December 2013 for a possible shoot schedule in Jan 2015. 

He asked to immediately start a ‘dossier’, to initiate him to India and its customs, traditions, music, cinema, religions and ‘culture’. With a huge smile on my face that the French call ‘La Banane’ (the smiley looks like a banana looking upwards and ‘avoir la banane’ is a euphemism for being amused), in September, it so transpired that I had to go for a very important meeting to Vienna along with a Senior employee of a major business house in Bombay. I called Claude and told him that if he wished, I could stay over in Paris for three days and take him through the vids, the pix and all the material I had collected. 

I had of course never met him, but who hadn’t heard of ‘ A man and a woman’ and his two Oscars for that film in 1965 - a film he shot a year after the release of the first James Bond film, Dr. No. Claude readily agreed to spend three days with me in “intense sessions of work” as he called them. I was supposed to be in Paris on the 7th, the 8th and the 9th of October with him and either come back to Bombay or to spend my 49th birthday there on the 12th. So I would have literally flown out on the night of the 6th. 

On the morning of the 6th the employee of the business house informed me that the meeting was cancelled in Vienna and that I wouldn’t be flying out that night. So I called my friend who had set up the first Skype Meeting, Philippe Azoulay, who will be doing the ‘Making Of’ of the film in India, but part of his larger project Shoot to Live, and say the Vienna meeting is cancelled and all my travel arrangements are on hold. He tells me, ‘Your choice buddy, but I do know that Claude has kept 7th, 8th and 9th for you’. I say ‘but Baba, the business house guys were making all my arrangements, now I shall have to buy my own ticket for a {ONE-MEETING} trip to Paris’, and he again left me the choice to propose.  

I spoke with my partner and my agent and we decided that I would travel - of course, in total comfort, to stay in my suite in a historical hotel and to embark upon the 3-day trip to Paris - all for a ‘meeting’ for a possible film as lead actor and producer. 

I knocked on Claude’s office two minutes before the appointed hour (was already ushered into the reception area 15 minutes earlier) and spoke with him for 5 minutes trying to suggest a work plan that I had gone with. After five more minutes of absently listening to me and without looking at a single document I had brought, he announced loudly while ejecting himself from his chair in 500 sq. ft. office whose walls didn’t have even an inch to accommodate more awards than the ones which covered the four sides, “I don’t know what you’re going to do in Paris the next few days, but, you are my lead actor, you are my India producer and you are my artistic advisor on all matters Indian, I’m gone”. 

Then he got up and left: for his haircut around the corner. And I, I had flown from Mumbai to Paris for this meeting and he said yes in those many words in the first ten minutes. That was that! A month later he had transferred the entire amount we had estimated for the 39 day shoot in India with four Oscar winners, into my company account without even asking for a contract, which I ultimately made him sign on his way back to the airport to catch his flight home after the shoot. All I said was that I would get arrested for having received such huge sums in foreign exchange without a contract!  Aah my stories never end… 

If I was to begin with anecdotes about SWADES and our subsequent experience at NASA’s space centers and the Kennedy Launch Base - that’s another hundred stories - so maybe later for those who might wish to hear more of ‘International-Desi’ folklore. 

What is the difference between working with international crews and Indian crews? 

Most French and other International projects I have worked on have always tended towards experimentation and the subtle nuances of the craft itself. There is a lot of pain that goes into writing new scripts with texts that often describe complex human issues, people are testing forms and also cross pollinating them, for example, I have seen some performances of le nouveau cirque (contemporary circus) with sublime storylines not often seen in contemporary writing here. 

Adapting performance styles from across the globe and incorporating some of them and making those an integral part of the presentation are commonplace, as is the urge to innovate and look for newer elements even in terms of venues. Of course, not all of it is anything worth writing home about, but the basic quest for “differentiation” and not just sticking to a particular style just because one has mastered it, is constantly present. Just a simple case in point would be Peter Brook’s Mahabharata. 

As far as the crews are concerned one major feature they have is the strict decentralizing of professionals and their tasks. They trust professionals with their jobs and even the youngest of the lot is not afraid to speak his or her mind. 

If we were to look at live performances, then the role of a Technical Director becomes paramount in ensuring, apart from directly impinging even on the aesthetics sometimes, that everything flows smoothly backstage as well as in the front of the house, that logistically we are always on schedule and that safety and security norms are strictly adhered to. 

India has many companies really experimenting with styles, form and scripts - some traditional, some modern- but there tend to also be a lot of known faces basically reciting text on stage without actually going any deeper into the process. Like I said before, most of these don’t tend to be anything more than superficial, or reiterations of pre-conceived notions in the minds of the public and the ‘critics’ but one sometimes does get a text or two that makes one think. Here I am reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s quote that has never once left my mind since I first read it as a kid, “A good theatre critic is the one who never leaves a turn unstoned!” 

The effort, both in Cinema and in Theatre, is skewed more towards commerce than towards the refining of skills.  I also feel that we don’t try hard enough to open newer and less-predictable performance venues or stories and even the promoters and audiences would rather go with the tried and tested than with an unknown entity possessing, maybe, a potential to surprise you, both aesthetically and commercially. And of course there’s a complete disregard for any safety norms on shooting sets or in live productions. But that’s just how we are as a people. 

Where are you today? What are you working on and where are you headed in your creative journey? 

I am currently directing two shows that I have written myself, one a musical with regular actors and dancers along with some traditional performers, and one based on the origins of sound with folk artistes. I am also preparing a comical interpretation of a contemporary writer’s soliloquy and a Kathak based show with a brilliant Vidushi and three doyens of Hindustani music. And of course as soon as the pandemic allows, I was acting in three web-series and a couple of films that were pushed, so we hope to start those soon. 

Where would you like to see yourself ten years from now?  

In a nice little home with a garden, hopefully within Bombay limits and to be more known across the world for that ‘role-of-a-lifetime’ that has been eluding me for quite some time now!